Thicker Than Water
by James Jago
Summary: There is something you should know, Lyra. Edward and Marissa Coulter had an elder child, a son. That child is me.'
1. Flying The Nest

Author's Note: All the usual disclaimers. This story is an AU for the first of my popular-beyond-my-wildest-dreams 'Silver Bird' story arc, but there's no need to read it first if you don't want to, though I intend to address the biggest unanswered question of the trilogy; namely, how and why Asriel and Marissa turned up apparently unscathed. (If I'm honest, I hadn't done much deep thinking about it myself, though I resolved the matter reasonably neatly by killing them both off at least once per volume. It's complicated, okay)  
This one goes out to everybody who had a kind word for the last lot, even 'Endgame Of The Gods', which even I thought was crap. Couldn't do it without you, folks!

Justin Coulter-Fairfax checked he had everything; a few changes of clothes, his notecase and a small bag of coins, penknife... and last of all, a Webley .455 revolver with some spare ammunition. He threw his cloak over one shoulder and left his bedchamber for the last time.  
His uncle had departed some days before with some mistress or other, to a complete lack of consternation in the household. It had, in fact, been something of a relief; anybody looking for a shining example of a grade-A bastard need look no further than Charles Fairfax. He was if anything even more disagreeable than Justin's mother, Marissa. No, Charles would not be missed. This wasn't the reason Justin was leaving, not least because his uncle had taken him in after his father died with great reluctance, as he'd made clear on numerous occasions.  
His aunt was a woman of robust good humour and a forward-looking attitude to life. Her response to the sudden departure of her husband was a most unladylike whoop of joy. Justin's departure was in fact precipitated by discovering her in the hayloft the previous afternoon enjoying, erm, ahem... nuptial activities with the young man who mucked out the stables. Much as he respected and admired his aunt, and far be it from young Justin to pass judgement on her choice of recreation, this was no longer a house in which he felt able to live and remain sane.  
His kestrel-daemon, Seraph, settled on his shoulder. "Think Aunt Elisabeth will mind if we pinch some of the master's firearms?" she wondered.  
"I'll maybe take one; the new carbine." It had greatly impressed Justin, and he had practiced with it several times. He slipped the revolver into his belt and headed for the gun room.  
Aunt Elisabeth was waiting for him. "Thought you'd be off," she said with a smile. "I can't say I blame you, either. There are some things that your father wanted you to have, but Charles wasn't going to tell you about." She handed him a swordbelt. "He used it in battle in India, apparently." Justin nodded mutely, examining the blade. It was of considerably higher quality than the ones he'd fenced with at school, with a wicked edge.  
"How did you know?" he asked after a long pause.  
"You're more predictable than you might like to believe, my boy." She handed him a photograph. It showed his parents as the left the church on their wedding day. "My last gift from your father is information," Aunt Elisabeth said dramatically. "When Edward went to settle with the man who seduced your mother, there was a child in the house. She was your half-sister, at least, and he meant to take her to raise as his own; he swore to the last that he was her true father, and unfortunately so did Asriel. But Edward died, and we aren't sure what happened to the child; she was just an infant. I hold Edward's legacy in trust, and she is entitled to half of it; it was his wish that she be treated as his own. He'd have been a good father to you both"  
"I'll find her if I can," Justin promised. He picked up the newest addition to the gunroom, and embraced his aunt. "I'll see you again some day, Aunt Elisabeth"  
"I hope so. Catch!" she tossed him a box of ammunition for the carbine. "I hope you won't need this, but just in case!"

A mile outside the grounds of Fairfax Towers, Justin ducked behind a bush. He emerged with the sword belt threaded through his trousers. It contained a pistol holster, into which his Adams fitted perfectly. Then he began to load the new carbine.  
It was a new and very expensive self-loading rifle in .32 calibre, using a fairly simplistic mechanism consisting of a straight-pull bolt action wedded to a fairly strong spring. It was also accurate enough for competition shooting, and had a telescope sight.  
"Let's hope we don't need it," Justin said to himself. "I say we head for Oxford and try to pick up work there. They might need crew on the freight zepplins or something." These were dangerous times, and anybody who could handle a gun would be an attractive proposition. "Besides," he added, "it's as good a place to start looking for this sister of mine as anywhere else."  
Three hours later, they jumped off the back of a motor lorry loaded with timber and headed into the city with a shout of thanks to the driver, not certain what the world was about to throw at them but ready to meet it head-on.

Two hours later, Justin had found his way to a disreputable-looking tavern not far from the Aerodock. It seemed as good a bet as any other, so they entered.  
There were numerous zepplin crews sitting around, drinking beer and talking shop. Some quiet business was being conducted, probably of a questionable nature.  
"Are any zepplin skippers looking to take on extra hands?" Justin asked the barman quietly.  
"That fellow over there, with the beard. Captain Matthews, of the Spirit of Free Enterprise. Needs a gunner."  
"Thanks," Justin replied, sipping his beer. He finished his drink, then headed over to the table indicated by the barman.  
"Captain Matthews? I hear you're looking to recruit additional crew."  
The man studied Justin for a moment, then Seraph. His own daemon, an albatross, gave them an equally appraising once-over and appeared to reach her own conclusions.  
"So, what qualities would you bring to my employ?" he enquired coolly, in a vaguely gyptian accent.  
"I'm a fair shot, I don't mind the odd bit of heavy lifting, and I speak French and German fairly well."  
"Useful, if it's all true. What's your name?"  
"Justin Fairfax." Better leave the Coulter part out, he decided; his mother had been downright infamous in some circles, and her reputation might put him at a disadvantage.  
"Right. You sound rather posh for this sort of thing. Runaway, are you?"  
Justin thought for a bit. "Pretty much, sir, though there was an element of mutual consent in the parting."  
Matthews laughed. "Well, maybe I'll give you a try on the next run. Ever been aboard a zepplin before?"  
"Only as a passenger, but at least I know I don't get airsick."  
"Well, that's a start. Think you can handle a Maxim?"  
"I've never tried before, but I've won a couple of prizes for marksmanship with a sporting rifle, so I should think I'll do alright."  
"We'll see. Well, I'll take you on as far as Brussels. We leave in two days, so you'll have a little time to learn a few things."

The Spirit of Free Enterprise was... huge. Justin whistled appreciatively at the massive and unconventional design. "Now that's a zepplin and a half!" he remarked.  
It was a pretty unconventional design. For a start, it had two gasbags, with a central spar supporting a massive cargo bay. It had no control gondola as such, but a large glazed area at the front of the hold served as a bridge. A total of eight engine gondolas hung from the two gasbags, all apparently steerable.  
"Glad you're impressed. That's your station up there," the captain said, pointing to the nose of the left-hand gasbag. Justin strained his eyes, and made out a fairly elderly-looking Maxim mounted in an open mounting. He made a mental note to buy a good jacket at the next opportunity. "I'll have to give you the tour myself; those without duties to attend to are probably out drinking the pubs dry. Follow me."  
Ingress and egress for passengers and crew was via a ladder extending from the base of the cargo hold. Justin tried very had not to let his trepidation show, and ascended the ladder with as much false confidence as he could project. "That's going to take some getting used to," he admitted once they had both reached the top, surveying the hold. It was even bigger than it looked from the outside; he'd assumed that crew quarters and other amenities would take up far more space than they actually did. In fact, besides one relatively narrow gantry at the bow it was all cargo space.  
"The bridge crew's bunks are up there, along with the messhall and a communal washroom; I've got an en-suite, of course. The engineers have a couple of berths in each gasbag, so they can get at the motors in a hurry. I assume that they've got used to the noise by now!" The captain remarked. "The gunners, meanwhile, have their own bunks near their stations. Follow me."  
They climbed a series of staircases into the gasbag itself, then another ladder. They emerged into a small alcove about six feet square. A long plank bed occupied one wall with cupboards underneath, whilst a somewhat threadbare armchair probably manufactured at about the time Justin's father was being born was squeezed into the opposite corner. A door at the far end led to a sort of balcony with an air-cooled Maxim mounted on a rail. It had been somewhat modified from the original pattern, Justin noted; as well as being a keen target shooter he had a knowledge of the technical as pects of firearms that verged on the encyclopedic. He examined the large circular drum affixed to one side of the breech with interest.  
"Two hundred fifty-round helical magazine; you'll find two more under your bed. A bit on the weighty side, but no more dangling cartridge belt to get in the way and no need to worry about it feeding wrong. You'll also find that it cools exceptionally well out here at altitude."  
"So will I!" Justin replied. "I shall try and make time to get a good coat before we set off. I assume there's some sort of watch pattern?"  
"Six on, six off. We don't have a ship's cook per se; each watch has a rota for the cooking. Think you're up to that?"  
"I spent three months on kithen duty for refusing to testify against a fellow pupil, sir. It was most enlightening." Actually, it hadn't been all that hard; it wasn't as if his fellow boarders were exactly accustomed to gourmet cuisine.  
"Fair enough. You may as well reacquaint yourself with the requisite skills by going down and giving Jess a hand. By the way, what was this lad accused of?"  
"I'd rather not go into detail this close to a meal if you don't mind, sir. Suffice it to say that Sodom and Gommorah were obliterated for something similar." THAT experience had been enlightening as well, though Justin hadn't really wanted to know. Captain Matthews merely chuckled, and sent Justin on his way.

The galley was surprisingly small; four hotplates and an oven, all anbaric, plus an assortment of cupboards. A tall, rangy redhead about Justin's age was stirring something and whistling tunelessly. She looked up at his approach, revealing herself to be startlingly attractive. Justin made a conscious effort to hide his embarassment. Her daemon -a small songbird of some sort, Justin guessed- said something inaudible, and she smiled slightly, evidently used to the effect she had on young men and determined to put him at his ease. Seraph picked up on it, and preened herself approvingly. The pretty ones usually liked watching the boys squirm, and Justin usually managed to get himself humiliated that way.  
"Oh, you must be the new gunner. I'm Jessica Matthews, unofficial ship's cook; everybody else is hopeless, so I always get stuck at the top of the rota."  
"I'm Justin Fairfax. So, what can I do?"  
"Grab a knife -the drawer by your right hand- and get those carrots diced, can you? If I can ever get this bloody hotplate to work they'll be going in the stew." Justin took up a good-sized kitchen knife and set about dicing the carrots with the dexterity of long practice. As the stew took shape, the two of them learned the bare bones of each other's family history.  
Jess was in fact the captain's daughter, though she mucked in as willingly as everybody else. She'd grown up on one zepplin or another; Spirit was a fairly recent purchase, a former Royal Navy munitions transport sold off as surplus. Details of her mother were not forthcoming, and Justin wisely refrained from pressing her. He himself stuck with the cover story he'd been told until his uncle's abrupt departure: his parents had both been killed in an airship accident, and he'd been deposited with his father's sister and her husband, the latter begrudging it all the way and making no effort to hide it.  
"Sounds pretty miserable," Jess remarked.  
"It wasn't all bad. Aunt Elisabeth was always kind to me, and she had no better an opinion of Uncle Charles than I did by the time he cried 'horse and hattock' with some trollop or other. I've no doubt she'll always welcome me back, but I wanted to make my own way in the world and a few years on a zepplin seems as good a way as any."  
"The glamour soon wears off, but it's not a bad life. I'd go stark staring mad stuck in some convent school like Ma wanted!" She was silent for a few seconds. "I'd rather not go into that, if you don't mind."  
"I understand. So, when do we serve this lot?"  
"Oh, we just leave it on the hotplate with a ladle and the lads help themselves; best way with watches coming and going at all hours. It'll be ready in about an hour, but help yourself to some bread and butter if you're hungry."  
"No thanks. Tea?"  
"Please. The caddy's just over there, and the teapot's in the cupboard beside your head. Don't forget to put it away after, it can get bumpy when we're underway!"  
"Okay. I imagine we have to be careful about water, right?"  
"Not as much as you'd expect. There's a rain-catcher in both gasbags, so we can usually manage unless there's a drought."  
The captain poked his head around the galley door a few minutes later. "Got our new gunner properly housetrained yet, Jess?"  
"Didn't need it; he's a dab-hand with a vegetable knife,I must say!"  
"I liked fencing at school," Justin replied modestly. "The skills transfer surprisingly well."  
"Good lad. Well, I'll be training you with the Maxim once we're underway; I hope you're as handy at that." With a faint smile, the captain departed.  
"I think he likes you," Jess remarked. "So, this must be a bit of a step down in the world, Mr Posh Boarder?"  
"You've never been to boarding school, have you? Trust me, it's downright palatial on this old girl by those standards!"

The next two days were occupied by loading cargo and provisions, housekeeping tasks and getting Spirit ready to sail. Justin wasn't the strongest member of the crew, but he never uttered a word of complaint and if ever he dropped a sack of the concrete mix they were transporting, he would merely pick it up and carry on. By the time he crashed headlong into his bunk on the first day he had impressed the captain with his determination. The crew were inclined to regard him with amusement at first, but Justin's easygoing nature and willingness to take a joke against himself won over most of them.  
The exception was an unpleasant character called Ellis -nobody seemed to know his first name- who apparently harboured a deep grudge against anybody born into more luxurious circumstances than himself. He made fun of Justin's accent continuously, and once or twice tried to make him fall or drop something. Justin tolerated it as best he could, unwilling to cause a scene this early in his career with Spirit, but his patience was wearing thin by the evening before they departed.  
He was sitting around the mess table half-listening to a tranquilising debate about the relative merits of helium and hydrogen when his mug of tea was knocked over. He took it without milk, and it was therefore extremely hot. Justin arose from the table with a howl, clutching at his scalded loins and cursing fearfully.  
"Oh, I DO aplogise, your lordship," Ellis said nastily, getting a withering look from Jess. The captain merely raised his eyes to heaven.  
Justin was still for a moment or two. Then he swung his arm with incredible speed, his strength boosted by pain and fury. Ellis was knocked backwards off his chair by the force of a backhand punch fit to split wood. He landed heavily, blood pouring from his nose, but came up spoiling for a fight.  
"Right, you posh dickhead!"  
"That's enough!" the captain ordered sternly. "Let it be a lesson to you about bullying, Ellis. Sometimes they hit back. And that's an end to it, alright? That's an order."  
Ellis acquiesced, but with obvious bad grace. Justin, determined to make up for losing his temper, went up to him and offered his hand. "I'm willing to call the score settled if you are."  
"Don't ask me to shake your hand, Fairfax. Not after your guardian kicked my father out of his home when he used the rent money to bury my mother."  
"THAT's what you're angry about? You might have said!" Justin fought not to laugh. "I'd have told you why he REALLY went to see a Harley Street specialist last year, for a start. But not over dinner, perhaps. I can tell you that the vile old codger once set his own moustache on fire with a cigar!"  
"I'd have paid good money to see that!" Ellis replied, smiling thinly.  
"He was posing for a relative's wedding photograph, and Aunt Elisabeth still has it somewhere. I'll write to her and get her to dig it out!"  
"That would make me feel a lot better. I misjudged you, Justin. I apologise." They shook hands.

Once the whole business of departure was over with, Justin found the job to be relatively easy. His stints on watch tested his concentration, and the headwinds were pretty fresh at altitude, but he soon developed the knack of scanning the skies for possible hazards whilst his mind ran on at will. His training with the Maxim progressed satisfactorily; cleaning and loading a gun was nothing new to him, and his school championship Bronze Medal for clay-pigeon shooting served him well against the basically similar targets fired from one of the other gun ports.  
"You've got the knack," the captain told him. "You may need it on our next run. We'll be crossing the Alps, and there'll be plenty of places for skyraiders to tackle us out there." Justin wondered, not at all comfortably, how he'd do against people who were shooting back.  
Since the downfall of the General Oblation Board and the associated fallout, many areas of the world formerly at least lightly patrolled by Magisterial forces were being left to their own unspeakable devices as resources diminished and forces hostile to the dominance of the Church grew in number. The situation put Justin in mind of an intricate machine, something like a mill with all its equipment running off the same flywheel (see the late Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam series for more information), that had been left running unattended due to industrial action by everybody except the man who stoked the boiler. Something would surely give eventually, and when it did it was generally felt that there would be no shortage of death and destruction across a good percentage of the surface of the Earth for many years to come, though it was generally agreed that once everybody had pieced things together in the history books they'd reckon it was worth it. Absolute power is not something happily relinquished by the noblest of men once it is obtained, let alone the likes of those who had fought their way to the top of the Church, mostly on the backs of others. It bore little resemblance to Christianity as a student of the Good News Bible might understand the term, but there it was.  
What Justin had no way of knowing at this point was that he was going to play a central if highly reluctant part in causing the final confrontation to break out, in circumstances inextricably linked with the identity of his long-lost sister and her rather colourful background. And there would indeed be quite a lot of death and destruction...

Meanwhile, back in Oxford, events were unfolding that would be of great future importance to Justin and his colleagues.  
Lyra was listening intently as Tony recanted what he'd heard in the pub the other night.  
"A portal?" she said thoughtfully.  
"Aye, and up in the mountains in Norway. Might even be true, I suppose, if they haven't all closed yet."  
"Well, if I want to find out I'd best get a move on, hadn't I?" she replied, with an intensity that her gyptian friend had learned to worry about. "A ship'll take days, and I'd have to get from the coast into the hills," she muttered to herself. "But a zepplin...? Tony, did this bloke tell you the name of a town or any landmark near it?"  
Tony shared a significant and hopeless look with Pan.

Not far away geographically speaking but a very long way indeed in any other sense, Lt Commander David Savage-Marshall, Fleet Air Arm (retired) threw up his hands in despair. "Please, Mary, just stop. If you can't explain it to me without using the word 'quantum' less than once every third sentence, don't bother. Now, in words of no more than three syllables this time, please?"  
"Okay. We fire a very, very narrow beam of electromagnetic radiation at an infitesimal point in space for a couple of seconds, then I push the wavelength up to whatever dimensions we need; dimensions as in length by height. That will hopefully open a temporary portal, without admitting enough exotic dark matter to jerk around with the Law For The Conservation Of Energy. Still with me?"  
"Dare I ask why you're worrying about some EU directive about lightbulb wattage or something?"  
"Ha ha. Anyhow, we race through with the portal generator and it closes behind us. I hope. Here's the snag." She paused. "The longest I've held a stable portal open and kept the Dust out -the EM beam repels it, which is a nice side benefit- is about a third of a second, and the prototype generator equipment is the size of a late-model Cray mainframe and uses about five thousand watts of electrical power every time I shoot. I had to buy a couple of secondhand diesel generators to avoid browning out the whole campus. WE'll need to be going fast."  
Here at last were numbers that the former naval aviator felt he could get his head around. "So you're going to need an aircraft, probably custom-built. Okay, we can work on that. Why couldn't you explain it that clearly from the word go?"  
"I was quoting from my article for Scientific American; they like stuff you need a degree to understand. We're gonna need a pilot, too."  
"I accept. Call me in a fortnight; I'll have some ideas on paper."

Anybody following these events would recieve a very painful sense of events on a collision course, at considerably higher speed than is strictly safe. Unfortunately, the only person with both the power and the inclination to do so was the angel Xanthania, and she was occupied with other concerns, of which more later. Had she known what was going to happen, and how much she personally would have to explain to the Authority, she would probably have chosen to take a very long sabbatical.

On Mars.

It was three days into the voyage, and Justin was bored. His training had gone well enough -he'd practiced against a kite for hours on end- but six hours is a long time to spend staring at anything, much less Norfolk from five thousand feet in the air. Actually looking for hostile aerocraft hardly took up all his time and effort, and he suspected that the secret of staying sane would be to train his mind to run several thought processes in parallel; whilst one part of his mind was alert for any hint of movement in the sky, the rest could be occupied with something entirely different. Author's Note: I'm not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but after eight months in the warehouse industry I've had ample opportunity to get very, very good this! Thinking of ways to try and get to know Jess better without coming across as a twerp, mostly.  
Seraph, who had acted as a cynically amused observer of Justin's efforts with the fairer sex for as long as she could remember, thought he was trying too hard. Jessica actually seemed to rather like Justin, and he probably didn't need to go down the perfumed-love-notes-under-her-pillow route; she'd just laugh, albeit in a kind way. Besides, his handwriting was awful.  
Jess also spent quite a lot of time thinking about Justin. She suspected that the easygoing affability and bonhomie he projected was a carefully constructed barrier between the outside world and the real Justin Fairfax. He was also quite obviously embarassed by his privileged background and obvious unfamiliarity with real work. In short, Jess suspected that Justin had hidden depths. Justin would undoubtedly replied that he quite probably did, but most of what was in them was better left well alone, and Jess was the sort of person to regard that as a challenge rather than sound advice.  
The fact that he was also extremely good-looking -more so than he seemed to realise, something else she found rather endearing- was all the better.  
Justin stared out at the horizon, watching intently as five dots grew into a quartet of dilapidated biplanes and one rather more modern-looking monoplane. He disengaged the safety catch of his Maxim and engaged his intercom.  
"All gunners, all gunners, Left Nose gunner has five aerocraft approaching from our one o'clock. Range... ten miles, approximate. Rate of closure uncertain but fairly high."  
"Right Nose gunner confirms. I can't see any weapons and they don't seem to be in formation, but keep a sharp lookout, people."  
The five continued to close. Justin began to worry. "Bridge, Left Nose gunner. If these madmen keep this up I'll be shaking hands with them! Permission to fire a warning burst?"  
"Negative, hold fire. If it's just a bunch of rich kids playing silly buggers and we shoot them up there'll be the devil to pay!"  
"Understood." Justin took careful aim at the monoplane, which seemed to be the fastest. /Just you try something, you little sod, and I'll give you a job-lot of dentistry you'll not soon forget.../ He kept his finger away from the trigger for fear of firing by accident.  
At the last moment, it pulled up and veered over Justin's head so low he thought the propeller would shred the gasbag, the slipstream all but throwing Justin overboard. "Bloody lunatic!" he yelled.  
"All gunners, this is the captain. Change of plan. If that twit tries another stunt like that, shoot!" Captain Matthews sounded slightly rattled. "Anybody see the other aerocraft?"  
There was a rattle of machine-gun fire off to the right. "Enemy fire!" yelled one of the gunners at nobody in particular.  
Justin cursed. It had been a trick! The monoplane had been a distraction. It was coming out of the bottom of a loop, guns chattering from the wingtips as it made to strafe the centre section. Justin opened fire, but it dipped below his line of fire and pounded the underside of the gasbag. An ominous smell of escaping gas -not the hydrogen itself, but the byproducts of making it- permeated the turret position. The monoplane had evidently been designed for aerobatics, and the pilot seemed to know his stuff pretty well. One of the biplanes made the mistake of crosing Justin's line of fire, and he poured thirty rounds into it. It nosed over and slammed straight into the wetlands at about three hundred miles an hour, burying itself ten feet in the ground. "Got the bastard!"  
The monoplane zoomed over Spirit from behind, giving Justin a second crack at it. Evidently the tracer from both his own gun and his counterpart off to the right was visible in the pilot's reflector, because it pulled up almost vertically... straight into a second biplane. There was a complicated crescendo of tearing wood and scraping metal, but somehow both aerocraft remained under control. The biplane's upper wings were torn off and the monoplane lost part of its tail, but the pilots evidently had sufficient confidence in their machines to turn and limp away, evidently sadder and wiser. Of the other two biplanes there was no sign.  
With great ceremony, the captain presented Justin with a slate and some chalk. The slate was divided into three sections, marked 'Confirmed', 'Probable' and 'Damaged'. 'Confirmed' and 'Damaged' both had one mark under them.  
"Splendid start, lad!" he proclaimed.  
Ellis came up and offered a handshake. "Nice shooting, Fairfax. Think you can do it again?"  
"Knock a rickety old biplane down, yes. Frighten a pilot into crashing? No, that's probably a one-off."

The remainder of the trip passed without further incident, and was considerably faster owing to favourable tailwinds, and they offloaded their cargo with the minimum of hassle. Justin took advantage of his shore leave to make several essential purchases, not least a heavy sheepskin coat and a thick scarf. He also came across a bookseller with a dozen English-language titles, mostly detective thrillers and 'tuppeny 'orribles', but better than nothing. Once he'd read them he could probably trade them with the others.  
Their next destination was a ten-day trip to Sarajevo with a mixed cargo of French brandy, tobacco and bales of coal-silk. "Enough to keep my Uncle Charles happy for, oh, at least three months!" Justin had remarked in passing as he deftly manouvered a trolley loaded with crates of brandy into the hold. He was more than a little shocked that Jess understood all aspects of that, though not half so much as her father.  
They were also taking on a couple of passengers, a minor Belgian diplomat and his wife. Neither possessed a waist so much as an equator, and Ellis passed a not entirely flippant comment about the airframe's weight tolerance being pushed right to the limit. Justin was tasked with showing them to their cabin, and found his forebearance tested more severely than Ellis could have achieved in his wildest dreams.  
"Hmph!" the man declared on inspection of his cabin. "Scarcely better than what the crew recieve!"  
"Actually, sir, this is the largest cabin onboard; bigger than even the captain's. This is primarily a freight zepplin, you see."  
"So I can see. I suppose we will be expected to dine with the crew as well?"  
"I expect some arrangement can be made to bring your meals to your cabin, sir," Justin replied. /If you're going to be like this all the blasted way it ought to suit everybody/ he added in the privacy of his own head.  
"I told you, Henri!" the woman scolded. "At least the railways still have some sense of propriety! Why, the very idea of eating with the crew! It's obscene!"  
"Marie, I have already explained that speed is of urgent neccessity. You were more than welcome to travel independently if you so chose. Now, young man, how will I summon assistance from the crew?"  
"There is a speaking tube in your cabin leading directly to the bridge. Please use it only in an emergency. I must also ask that you refrain from smoking at all times; if there should be a leak in one of the cells, the consequences of a naked flame would be nothing short of catastrophic."  
"Oh, curse it! Why can't you use helium?"  
"Helium is less efficient and about twenty times the price, sir; as commercial attache you will undoubtedly appreciate the economics of the matter. Now, if you will excuse me, I am about to go on duty." He retreated, wondering how the hell they'd arrange room service.

"You told them what?" the captain said with a groan.  
"That I expected some arrangement for bringing their meals to them could be arranged, sir. I'll do it myself if needs be; they're going to be well-nigh unbearable otherwise. And I've a horrible feeling that M. Diplomatte will try and sneak the odd gasper as well!"  
"I'd not be at all surprised. When they want their dinner, take them a full list of ship's regulations. Pompous tits they may be, but they're the sort to set great store by Regulations."  
"I hope you're right, sir."  
Justin knocked on the door to the guest quarters with both trepidation and difficulty, as he was carrying a full tray of food he'd prepared himself, cutlery and a small tablecloth. Two more crewmen trailed behind bearing a small folding table and two chairs.  
"Come!" the Commercial Attache said curtly. The men with the furniture entered first. "I apologise if this is somewhat rough, sir, but we've done our best to-" Justin paused, noting the cigar in the man's hand. "Sir, I must ask you to extinguish that. I did inform you that smoking is prohibited, I'm certain."  
"Oh, nonsense!" he sniffed. Justin took a deep breath.  
"Sir, ship's regulations are quite explicit on the matter. The tiniest leak in one of the cells could blow the ship and all aboard to glory if it found a source of ignition. You are endangering not merely your own life, but that of your wife and thirty others. I'm afraid I must insist that you extinguish your cigar. Please don't oblige me to report this to Captain Matthews."  
"Are you threatening me, young man?"  
"No sir, I am warning you that you are in breach of ship's Regulations and placing this vessel at risk. It is my duty to ensure that this airship and her crew are not endangered by recklessness or negligence. I will not warn you again. If you have not extinguished your cigar by the time I leave this room, the captain will hear of this, and he is liable to be considerably less tactful than myself. Have I made myself clear?"  
"You impudent young scounderel! The captain shall be hearing of your conduct from me!" the Commercial Attache roared triumphantly. "How do you like THAT?" he seized the speaking tube.  
Justin and his assistants erected and laid the table, and served the meal. "If you will excuse us, sir, we have other duties to attend to." Justin left the room. "He still had that cigar on the go. We'd better report it, I suppose."  
He entered the bridge to find the captain in a mood of weary amusement. "I take it that our passenger has been in communication with you, sir?"  
"Yes. I could smell that damned cigar through the speaking tube, and we had Words. Good try, lad. God Almighty! Why do I always end up with the awkward ones?"  
"I think bringing him his meals might be well worth the trouble after all, sir. If you'll excuse me, I'm on duty in a few minutes."  
"Alright, carry on."  
Pausing only to cobble together a couple of sandwiches and draw a mug of tea from the perennially running urn, for he'd had no time for food earlier, Justin returned to his post.

"I know it sounds crazy, Elaine," Dave admitted, "but we really could use you onboard. It's just too much for three people to handle."  
"I see an analyst three times a week, Dave. Why should I care if it sounds crazy?" Elaine Parry laughed for the first time in about thirteen years. "Marion's always on about my need to achieve closure, and if anything will help, this will. Assuming it actually works, of course, and if not there'll at least be some good openings for heckling."  
"I always knew the old Elaine was in there somewhere!" Dave said with a rueful chuckle. "I suppose I'd better book a couple of plane tickets to Moscow, then. Yeah, I know; the Russians weren't my first choice either, but I've explained to the entire assembly team that each one of them will be accompanying me on at least four proving flights, and the quality control inspectors on six of them. If that doesn't work, I can't think what will."  
"Patrolling the workshop with a length of two-by-four, maybe?"  
"Already tried that."

Lyra made a careful study of the map. "Okay. Assume the geography's roughly the same, and the window's where that trapper said it was..." she used a length of cotton thread to trace the outline of the route pencilled in by the man who'd claimed to have seen the portal in question, then measured it against the scale. "Thirty miles from that whaling station. Eighty miles there from Oslo. Then the same distance back... Best not to even THINK about what it'll be like getting to Oxford!"  
"Lyra," Pan said in the long-suffering voice he used on her more often than not, "you're mad. It's impossible. We will die. Even if the window's still there when we get to it, which is hardly a given, we will have to travel several hundred miles in a world we know next to nothing about. Or do you have some clever plan for contacting Will once you get there?"  
"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."  
"If you don't get yourself killed one of the dozen-odd ways I've spotted so far or one of the quite probably unlimited number that haven't occurred to me yet first!"  
"If you'd rather stay here, that's fine. But my mind is made up."  
Pan sighed. "That's not really much help; Tony Mik-something's daemon evaporated when he died, and they'd been forcibly severed. Besides, there's just the slightest possibility that you won't get into QUITE as much trouble with me keeping an eye on you. So, what exactly did you have in mind?"


	2. A Family Reunion

Author's Note: All details pertaining to Sywell Airfield are accurate; I know this because I used to work not far from there, and for the record I think the jetway is a bloody awful idea.  
I also defy you to spot all the 'Lyra's Oxford' references in this chapter. Incidentally, in 'The Silver Bird', the Aurora Borealis sets down somewhere between St Thomas Street and Oxpens Road.

Justin was in the Right Dorsal turet, cleaning down the Maxim's inner workings with methylated spirits. They were moored up at some nameless little satellite town in the industrial North, and most of the crew were loading Spirit with machine tools and components bound for St Petersberg. Four of the gunners had been chosen by lot for armament-maintainence detail, a dull but relatively easy job. It was almost impossible to clean the guns when underway; skyraiders had an awkward habit of showing up when one's primary means of defence was in pieces all over the deck, being scrubbed down. Stoppages from a weapon too long between cleanings had a habit of cropping up at inopportune moments as well, but there was an element of calculated risk in these things.  
Justin held the last part up to the light, and found it to wear a satsfactory gleam. With great care, he screwed it back into place and gave it a light brushing of lubricant with a ball of cotton wool, then replaced the outer casing. "Right, just the rear gun to do now, and then I'm for a quick cup of tea before we muck in with the stevedores down there," Justin remarked, picking up his cleaning kit and heading for the ladder. "I really don't envy the dorsal gunners," he said to Seraph.  
"We're not a lot better off," she replied. The overhead cover in the forward gun positions was a largely psychological comfort; at speed, the rain seemed to be falling horizontaly towards them, a phenomenon easily observable to any road user. The rear guns were generally considered the more comfortable in terms of weather protection, but tended to be targeted by skyraiders more often. The waist gunners, therefore, were by general consensus the most envied. They were not begrudged their relative comfort in battle, however; the front, rear and dorsal arcs sported two guns, whereas the flanks supported only one. That made them vulnerable, and Captain Matthews assigned only the best gunners to those positions.  
Once the Right Aft Maxim was rendered good as new, Justin made his way to the galley to find Jess wrestling with the urn. "Not on the blink again, is it?"  
"Yep. Want to take a look?"  
"It's not QUITE like stripping a machine gun, but I'll give it a go." Taking the screwdriver, he procceeded to dismantle the tea urn and prayed he'd be able to put it together again if and when he sorted it out. One look at the inner workings suggested that this would be somewhat academic.  
"Bloody hell. No wonder it's packed up; the wires are almost rusted through! Bad seal somewhere, I suppose," Jess remarked, suggesting she knew more about these things than she chose to let on. Seraph suspected she had wanted Justin to feel he'd impressed her, but kept her own counsel.  
"Oh, terrific. You'd better let the skipper know- no, I'll tell him myself once I get down there. Well, at least it went when we were in port. See you later."

"All guns shipshape, Justin?" the captain asked once Justin arrived at the loading ramp.  
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry to report that the tea urn isn't, however." He described the state of affairs in the galley.  
"Oh, hell! Well, I'd better have Hodges take a look; maybe he can jury-rig something. Grab a trolley and give Bert a hand, will you?"  
"Aye, sir."

"Okay, this is a concept sketch of the Beriev-46, hopefully to be called the Marten." Dave spread a sheet of paper out on the tabletop. The Aircraft Illustrated correspondent was favourably impressed.  
"Nice lines. Maritime patrol and ASW, right?"  
"That's one of the possibilities. Also search-and-rescue, general transport and maybe some specialised stuff like firefighting. Anything the marketing guys can think of, I expect. I've given them free rein, so long as we get our license money."  
"Smooth. What's the performance likely to be?"  
"Just over the Mach with the Tumanskys, operating radius depends on the model but starts from about five hundred miles; that's not a hard number yet, by the way. We've run a few computer simulations, but we won't know for definite until we've done some real flying with the prototype. That won't be for another three months; we've barely started assembling it."  
The correspondent went away with a copy of the sales brochure and the makings of a decent article. A small consortium custom-designing their own aircraft for electromagnetic physics research over the Arctic Circle would make a reasonable space-filler for next month's issue, and Dave was quietly pleased that he'd avoided directly lying to the man. Whilst his esteem for the press in general was not high -excessively detailed reports in the Falklands had placed lives at risk, something he'd not soon forgive- he found the defence media more supportive and better informed than the Ministry of Defence quite a lot of the time.  
What Aircraft Illustrated had not been told was that there were TWO prototypes under construction, one of which was being fitted out for a mission that Dave hadn't listed in his sales pitch and whose specifications were rather more, how to put it... Lively. Of which more later. Author's Note: If you've read my previous efforts you'll already know most of it!

They had another passenger, who Justin had heard was Master of one of the colleges on business up here. He was enjoying a last cigar before takeoff, having taken the lack of smoking facilities in a relatively sanguine manner; if he'd demanded passenger-liner standards of comfort he'd have paid passenger-liner prices. "Takeoff in ten minutes, sir," Justin told him politely.  
"Thank you, young man. What's your name, by the way? You remind me of somebody for some reason."  
"I'm Justin Fairfax, sir. If you'll excuse me, I must report to my station now."  
The Master of Jordan College finished his cigar, wondering why the young man had reminded him so much of Edward Coulter. Wait a minute... He'd had a sister, who'd married a man by the name of Fairfax. A plausible enough explanation for the resemblance, up to a point. But even if he WAS Edward Coulter's nephew, why in heaven's name was he working on a rather down-at-heel cargo zepplin as an ordinary crewman? This merited some discrete inquiries, though the Master had a feeling that Justin might be reticent on the matter.  
He was right. Justin refused to be drawn, no matter how carefully the Master phrased his enquiries over dinner. He briefly mentioned that he was acquainted with the Fairfaxes of Cirencester, to which Justin airily replied that it was scarcely an uncommon name. The warning look passed to one of the other crewmen as he said so -Ellis, though the Master did not realise this- did not go unnoticed, however. The Master guessed more or less correctly that there was bad blood between Sir Charles and the young man he took for his son, and feeling it was not his place to press the issue he decided to write to Fairfax's wife in confidence. Lyra deserved to know at least some family.

At this precise point in time, Lyra was sitting on the bench in the Botannical Gardens, sensing Will's presence uite distinctly. /I'm coming, Will/ she promised, not realising that he was working towards the same end from a somewhat different angle.  
Once their time was done, she got to her feet and tried hard to project an air of brisk determination. "Right, we're going to Beaumont Street. Where did I put the list"  
"I've still got my reservations about this," Pan warned.  
"Oh, do stop worrying!"

Will stood up. "Alright, let's go."  
"Okay. We've got to pick Mary up from Sywell on the way home, by the way; she's been having flying lessons," Dave explained, having timed his return perfectly. "Well, somebody's got to fly the plane when I'm in the head. You'd rather it was your mother?"  
"Point taken."  
"Thought you'd see it my way. Come on, let's get some lunch. I know a nice little pub round here..."

The Master decided not to mention his suspicions to Lyra until he had some proof. Instead, he spoke quietly and confidentially to a former student by the name of Deurden, who had read Classics with Fairfax and was now Permanent Under-Secretary to the Minister of War.  
"Children? Not to the best of my knowledge, though I believe Elisabeth's nephew ended up foisted on them. And by all accounts Charles would have happily seen the boy end up in the workhouse instead."  
"Nephew?" the Master enquired guardedly. "How come?"  
"The boy's mother was carrying on with another man. Edward confronted the chap in question -forget his name now- and got himself shot. Rumour has it there was another child involved, but I never knew the truth of it. Very bad business all round, anyhow. Strictly between ourselves, old chap, I can't really blame the boy. Charles was a first-rate shit when I knew him, and I doubt he's improved with age."  
The Master left the club where they'd met with a great many things on his mind. Even if Lyra did indeed have a brother, there was no positive proof that Justin was in fact said sibling. The letter to Fairfax's wife might yet offer some confirmation.  
By the time a reply arrived, Lyra had returned to school. The Master read the letter, raising an eyebrow when he learned that Elisabeth Coulter -she had jettisoned the Fairfax surname as quickly and enthusiastically as her nephew- had been enjoying a cruise aboard the S.S. Zenobia with somebody she described with tongue-in-cheek discretion as 'a close friend.' When he reached the main point of the letter he nearly sprayed his tea across the room.  
"So," he said to his daemon, "how best to inform Lyra?" They formed a mental picture of Lyra charging off into the wilderness in search of her brother, and winced. "Best to give that a little thought first."

With great ceremony and deference to local preference -not to mention the impossibility of getting hold of champagne this side of the Iron Curtain, however rusty it was these days- Mary smashed a bottle of vodka against the nose of the Aurora Borealis. "Right, all hands man the alehouse!" Dave called. There was a general stampede for the nearest bar as soon as their interpreter translated this into Russian for the thirty-strong assembly team. Nobody your chronicler was able to question can remember much of the next few hours, and the start of the intensive crew-training programme Dave had planned was delayed by 48 hours on account of nobody being fit to fly.  
"Important life leson, Will," Dave remarked over a cup of very strong coffee the next morning, as they compared hangovers. "Never, ever mix Old Speckled Hen with vodka. Especially not in the same glass!"

Lyra bent over the copy of J.C.B Carborn's By Zepplin To The Pole, an invaluable reference tool for what she had in mind, though she wasn't going QUITE that far. Smith & Strange Ltd's direct-sales outlet had been a treasure-trove. The notepad beside her was covered with jottings, and the margins of the book itself sported several comments. Her teachers would have been amazed.  
"We're going to need an awful lot of kit," Pan remarked. "It's going to cost a fortune, too."  
"So I save up," Lyra replied. Being a day student rather than a boarder, she had secured a job in the Library. The pay wasn't especially good, but between it and the monthly income from Asriel's estate that she had acquired more or less by default -no other descendant could be found and he'd left no will, which Lyra suspected was because he thought he'd live forever- she probably had more ready cash than the bunch of snobs she was cooped up with at St Sophia's.  
"Pan?" she said after a few minutes. "I've just realised something. Midsummer's Day falls on a Monday next year. We'll be at school."  
"Well, we'd better get our skates on, then!"

Spirit was berthed in London, which was registered with Lloyds as her home port. The zepplin was currently in 'drydock', having the engines and steering gear overhauled. It was a three-week job, and gave the majority of the crew a much-needed break from the usual routine. The actual maintainence work was largely the perogative of dockyard workers, with the Chief Engineer keeping an eye on them, so the crew were turned loose upon the fleshpots of Soho or whatever else in London took their fancy.  
It was also an opportunity to collect any accumulated mail from the Aerodock's post office, which dealt largely with Royal Mail charter zepplins but also provided a post-holding service for crews. Justin found a single letter, from his aunt. He decided to read it later, and put it in his cabin before taking an omnibus to the Imperial War Museum for the afternoon. After much deliberation he decided to retain his revolver for fear of being accosted by footpads.  
It was early evening when Justin returned, having been accosted instead by an irate museum attendant who thought he'd stolen the revolver. Justin had politely suggested he check the manufacturer's serial number against those listed as museum property, but apparently the curators had not troubled themselves to write them down. Only once the museum's collection of service revolvers had been checked by hand was a by now fuming Justin allowed to leave, albeit with a magnificent apology.  
He lay on his bunk, and opened the letter with his penknife. Turning on the rather feeble anbaric light above his pillow, he began to read. Two paragraphs in he stopped reading abruptly and exchanged looks with Seraph, who was all but laying an egg. "I think," Justin said in a measured and precise tone, "that we had better catch a train to Oxford in the morning."  
Leaving the Greater London area required the captain's permission, but was generally granted if he felt the requestee was fairly sensible. The next morning, Justin boarded the 11:35 to Oxford on 'urgent personal business.'

The four of them relaxed in comfortable armchairs around a small table in the lounge bar of the Aviator Hotel, adjacent to Sywell Aerodrome. Sywell isn't an especially large or elaborate airfield, largely supporting private and light commercial aircraft despite the current owner's determined efforts to add a paved runway and full business-jet capacity. Residents of Sywell village were steadfastly resisting the idea, and who can blame them?  
Dave glanced up from his sheaf of documents with professional curiosity as a vivid yellow Augusta-Bell 222-series helicopter (as seen heavily disguised as Airwolf) lifted from the field and roared off at considerable speed. "That's stuffed up everybody's takeoff clearance," he remarked. The local air ambulance was normally stabled at Northampton General Hospital's own helipad, but for any maintainence more elaborate than topping up the oil it had to be sent over to Sywell, and for obvious reasons it jumped the queue in the event of a medical emergency. Dave was disinclined to complain about the delay to his own schedule, but occasionally worried that some inexperienced pilot would be unable to cope with being forced to assume a holding pattern at a moment's notice and do something stupid.  
"So, we're more or less on track for the first full systems test in a year's time," Mary told the others. "What about the weapons trials?"  
"Almost finished; I'm just waiting for the Sidewinders to arrive." Dave's insistence on the NATO-standard equipment he'd used in battle, despite the ready availability of Russian ordinance from airbase commanders forced to auction it off just to settle the back-pay account, had held up the project more than once.  
"Good. One year to go, people." They clinked glasses.

The Master of Jordan College read the telegram with some amazement. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said quietly. "I wonder how Lyra will react?"  
Justin reached Jordan College at around four o'clock, having allowed time for his sister to return from school. He took the time to stroll through Oxford, admiring the achitecture and general air of learned dignity, and getting somewhat lost in the process. He found Jordan more or less by accident, and addressed himself to the head porter.  
"Excuse me? Can you let the Master know that Justin Coulter is here to see him, please?"  
"One moment, sir." Shuter picked up the telephone. "Sir, a master Justin Coulter wishes to speak to you. Oh? Yes, sir, I'll find her as soon as I can." He replaced the reciever, wondering what was going on. With a mental shrug, he turned to give Justin directions to the Master's office. As he did so, Lyra happened to appear from somewhere down the corridor, a copy of Verity's 'A Phrasebook For The Nordic Lands' and a couple of Smith & Strange's 'Globetrotter' series of maps under one arm. Lyra devoting herself to the academic study of anything like that could mean many things, Shuter reflected, none of them good. He'd have a word with the Master about that later... His train of thought encountered a set of points maintained by Jarvis Rail as his gaze passed from one to the other. It was fairly subtle, but there was a definite likeness. The eyes, the cheekbones, the overall face shape all suggested a fairly close family relationship. /So THAT's what this is all about/ he mused. "Lyra? The Master wants to see you in his office. Far as I can make out, you've not done anything wrong he's found out about yet, so don't worry. Would you mind escorting this young man up there as well?"  
"Certainly. Follow me please, Mr..."  
"Coulter. Justin Coulter." Lyra raised her eyebrows. "Mean anything to you?"  
"I'd rather not talk about it. Follow me, please."  
"I wholly sympathise with you if you have any issue with Marissa Coulter," Justin remarked once they were safely out of Shuter's earshot. "She's more or less directly responsible for getting me stuck with my uncle for fourteen years!"  
"How come?"  
"Look, I assume you're aware that Edward Coulter attempted to kill Asriel on account of him shagging Marissa, and there was a child involved."  
"I bloody ought to. That child was me!"  
By truly Herculean effort, Justin kept his face utterly expressionless. "I see. There's something you should know, Lyra. Edward and Marissa Coulter had an elder child, a son. That child is me."  
Lyra stared at him in perfect, open-mouthed amazement. "Are you trying to tell me that you're my half-brother?" she said slowly.  
"At least. Somehow or other -nobody seems to know how, which might be just as well- it comes to Edward Coulter's attention that Marissa's second child is not in fact dead, but under the rather dubious guardianship of the man she believes to be your real father. Perhaps understandably, he takes exception to this and hares off to give Asriel a right kicking and retrieve you; he was pretty convinced that he was your real father, insofar as you're supposed to inherit a very large amount of money from him."  
Lyra gave this some thought. "Bloody hell," she concluded.  
The Master could add little to Justin's account. "I'm honestly amazed that they were able to bury the truth so deeply," he admitted. "A remarkable achievement."  
"Remarkable, yes. I'd hardly call it an achievement, though; that would imply some good coming of it."  
"I see your point."  
A couple of hours later, they found themselves sitting on the roof watching the sunset. "Well, I've done most of the talking up until now. What have you been getting up to over the last fourteen years?"  
"This may take a while," she warned. It took two hours, and had Justin well and truly dumbstruck.  
"It's just incredible," he admitted. "I've heard every sea story and wild rumour going about what happened up North, but..." He just shook his head, and stopped for a few minutes to set his head in order.  
"It sounds crazy, I know."  
"That it does. Anyway, I'm going to leave that to one side for now. How do you feel about meeting Aunt Elisabeth?"  
"I think I'd rather like her, actually. How much more shore leave have you got?"  
"Couple of weeks. I'll send a wire and sort something out with the captain, and we can get the train out there in the morning. I'd better get to the Post Office and let him know."  
"Yeah. Come on, I know a shortcut!" Lyra leapt across to another roof and headed along it at speed. "Come on! You're not scared of heights, are you?"  
Justin exchanged looks with Seraph. They shrugged, and jumped.

Elaine burst out laughing, nearly spilling her wine; the fourth glass she'd had that evening. "Look, Mary, let's just assume I really am interested in finding a boyfriend right now. Why on Earth would I choose Dave?"  
"You share the same sense of humour," Mary replied, ticking a list off on her fingers. "He puts up with your temper without batting an eyelid. He possesses charm, wit and surprising good looks for a twenty-a-day man in his forties. Will likes him. And last but not least, he'd loaded." This last wasn't strictly true, though Dave jointly owned a very successful small business and had few demands on his income besides a mortagage and the unreasonably fast motorcycle he was still paying for.  
"Well, he's got a few good points. But he's not somebody I'd pick as Will's stepfather, frankly. You know what thse two get up to when I'm not keeping an eye on them! And besides, I will never, EVER sleep with a man who owns the complete set of Airwolf DVDs!"  
"Okay, so he enjoys playing the indulgent batchelor uncle just a little bit too much, but it's all pretty harmless."  
"Harmless? HARMLESS? When I picked Will up from Dave's flat last week he was drinking Kronenberg and watching Reservoir Dogs! A fouteen year-old boy! You call that harmless?"  
"Yes, Ellie, I do. Will's fourteen going on about thirty; he's WAY past the point where some senseless violence on TV can do him any lasting psychological damage. On the other hand, I'm sort of with you on the Airwolf DVDs." They collapsed from wine-induced giggling. At this point two grubby and bruised individuals let themselves into the house with Will's key, singing an old Royal Marines marching song I choose not to reproduce here lest this be read by the young and impressionable. They'd been paintballing, and had evidently had a good time.  
"What're you two giggling about?" Will asked, slurring his words only slightly; they'd gone home via Dave's flat.  
"Girl stuff. You don't want to know."  
"Fair enough. I'm going to bed. 'Night, folks." Will headed for the stairs, swaying a little.  
"How much as he had?" Elaine enquired sharply.  
"Less than you two," Dave replied amiably. "Well, I'd better go; got a cab waiting. See you tomorrow!"  
"See what I mean?" Elaine remarked once he'd left.  
"Frankly, no. They're doing what teenagers and men of a certain age do when they're in each other's company. You need to lighten up."  
"Coming from you that's saying something!" Cue more giggling.


End file.
